I received a K-1 in the mail today for my share of 2014 income as a partner in a joint real estate venture. The partnership's address is in the District of Columbia (as was the location of the real estate) and my residence for tax purposes is Maryland. On the last page of the K-1 there is a footnote...

A very popular look these days is to paint your baseboards and casings but leave your windows stained. For doors, you leave the door stained but paint the casing and the jamb. It creates the sense of a picture frame around the windows especially. I really like it. It might be a nice money-saving com...

Cats are worse than dogs. When we bought our second house we had to remove all carpets and padding, pull up and replace all the tack strips along the walls, and soak the plywood subfloor with a bleach-based cleaner. It was a mess. The previous owners had cats and they had covered up the odor with de...

OP here. So after further research and some assists from you guys, I believe that USPS notifies periodical publishers of changes of address. Why my particular address got mangled is still a mystery, but I've got to think somebody just fat-fingered something at the magazine. USPS will also make avail...

We moved to a new state in November of last year. We were as diligent as possible about notifying the USPS in plenty of time, notified the magazine publishers directly, etc. Everything seemed to be working fine until today, when I went on line to renew one of my magazine subscriptions and they had a...

I'm trying to enter my automobile mileage expense for a rental property in TurboTax. I thought I would be able to just enter the total mileage driven to check on the property and use the current expense per mile figure, but TT wants me to enter my car make and model, the year I purchased it, whether...

The OP says the FIL's dementia came on quickly. Has his doctor been consulted about this - perhaps it is some medication effect/interaction or something that can actually be addressed. This is just a question, mods, not medical advice. Interesting question. My FIL and wife spend half of the year in...

We found out about the checks because the eldest daughter -is- watching things pretty closely. She saw the bank statements and immediately followed up. FIL's dementia has appeared pretty recently and suddenly. She's in the process right now of taking away his paper checks and setting up automatic bi...

Agreed. My FIL has no recollection of signing these checks - some of them appear to have been written by the handymen and FIL signed them. He clearly has cognitive issues, and frankly can not afford the loss of several thousand dollars. His second wife has a history of loaning money to _anybody_ th...

If they agreed to it, it likely isn't illegal. Sure, report it to the police, but I wouldn't expect them to do much as they typically fill their time with voilent crimes (and traffic tickets). They'll probably just tell you it is a civil matter unless others are reporting something similar about th...

Merely taking a loan, even if the terms aren't favorable to the lender, isn't a scam. I think you're right to be suspicious, but I wouldn't jump to conclusions. You will find that collecting on a loan without written proof that the loan existed can be difficult. You could try to get the borrower to...

my FIL, who is 89, lives with his second wife (79) and his savings are in a trust jointly controlled by he and his eldest daughter (not my wife). We learned this weekend that both my FIL and his wife have been been making "loans" to two local handymen since December, totaling $7K. Nothing ...

How about getting certified in human factors engineering? I have both a Psychology and a CS degree and this field of study is the perfect mix. Check out http://www.humanfactors.com/training/ for training possibilities. Thanks for the link! That appears to be interesting. Is the certification in dem...

How about getting certified in human factors engineering? I have both a Psychology and a CS degree and this field of study is the perfect mix. Check out http://www.humanfactors.com/training/ for training possibilities.

Why not just buy a SPIA at age 70 or so? That way you have the money coming in for the rest of your life to pay for LTC if you need it, and if you don't need it, you have the money coming in to spend anyway.

I play a -lot- of golf. I was willing to retire only when I could afford a membership at a nice country club. It's a priority for me, but to each his own. As far as the alarm system goes, I passed on the alarm system and bought the signs and stickers on eBay.

At 100% stock your biggest risk to retirement, as others have stated, is sequence of returns. If the market dropped 50 percent next year, would you still feel as secure about your retirement as you do today? We are also recently retired at 54/56 years of age and have a 40/60 AA primarily to mitigate...

Hendersonville, NC almost makes all of your criteria. 1/2 hour from Asheville, which isn't quite as big as you want, and 2 hours from Charlotte NC. Scenery to die for, 4 mild seasons. And although it wasn't necessary for us, I believe the public schools are excellent. We move there in a month. :)

My wife retires this month, with a pension of approximately $30K per year. If she dies before me, I will receive approximately 1/2 of her pension. She currently holds a $300K life insurance policy, my original idea being that if she dies before me the $300K would offset the loss of the 1/2 pension. ...

As you have a collection of bonds so the yield change as a percentage is smaller but over time your yield will drift down (until it changes direction and goes back up). Randomguy, we've been in retirement for 12 years now, with a 50% stock/50% bond portfolio and taking our 2.5% annual withdrawals f...

There's no doubt I could sell it tomorrow if I slashed the price by 50%. :). The house seems to be fairly priced compared to others nearby, but I have a feeling that none of them are selling either. That said, we've had two couples in the past month that were very interested, but didn't pull the tri...

Here's my situation. I'm early retired and my wife retires next month. We live in Maryland but we're moving to North Carolina in November. We have yet to sell our house here in Maryland, although it's been on the market for four months. Our house is on the expensive side so the pool of buyers is som...

I wouldn't think it would affect the resale value, but from a practical standpoint, I think they're pretty bad. Our two teenage boys shared one and they would lock the other one's door and then forget to unlock it when they were done, so the other one couldn't get in.

interesting. why remove plates? Let's say the new owner keeps the plates. They go rob a bank. Those plates are tied to your name. You don't need that hassle. Also, remember that there are red light cameras and speed cameras and you don't want those tickets. Also, you and I have registered our cars....

I have a 1997 Honda Accord with 225K miles that I need to get rid of. I hate the idea of giving it away to a junk dealer because the car runs great and the interior is nice and clean. But it has some minor body issues - my son skidded on a turn a while back and hit a concrete wall with the front rig...

I'm looking at it now on the TDAmeritrade CD center. One has more than a week to buy this thing. I personally would not buy it. I would be happy instead to take my chances with an intermediate-term bond fund over that time span. Let's see what Janet Yellen says this week, too. Can't say I disagree.

I got a ping from TD Ameritrade saying they were offering an FDIC insured CD through GE Capital - an 8 year CD at 3%. Noncallable. The duration is a little longer than I would like but it still seems like a decent deal. What do others think?

We decided we wanted to retire to the western NC area last year. We looked at several communities in the area, including the Cliffs. We found our dream location at Champion Hills (http://www.championhills.com). More house for the money, golf course is ranked #11 in the state. People are so friendly ...

For avid golfers, there are great bennies to being a club member. Pace of play is typically faster, so you're not taking the entire day to play 18 holes. You're frequently treated better by the staff at a club than at your local muni. There are events all the time happening at a club - tournaments, ...

Maybe I'm the crazy one, but everything that my wife and I have are in each other's name, and we're the beneficiaries of each other's 401(k). What are the odds of our both dying at the same time? That's kept me from going down the trust route. But I'm open to options or to contrary opinions. We have...

I'm considering purchasing a secondary market annuity that would get us to age 70. Matonplayer: This could be a very big mistake. Jason Zweig, respected columnist for the Wall Street Journal , explains: Another Can't-Miss Deal That Can Miss Spectacularly Best wishes. Taylor Taylor, thanks. This art...

People may think if it as a mental accounting trick but after thinking long and hard on this topic it seemed to me I am looking at 2 distinct phases pre and post SS and pension. To plan for post SS and pension which is about 14 years away I can take X dollars and a say 65/35 AA and let things run t...

I don't like callable CD's. From the bank's standpoint, it's heads I win, tails you lose. If rates decrease, stay the same, or only increase slightly, they will call the CD - and they win (by being able to loan-out money at a lower rate). If rates increase significantly, they will not call the CD, ...

I suppose that from my limited understanding, those sound almost too good to be true. A 9% 15-year CD? Bond-like risk or not, that's nuts. If they call it, you avoid the downside of duration risk anyhow. Hopefully, someone with more understanding will chime in and explain why this product exists, g...

They're being issued by Goldman Sachs and purchased through TD Ameritrade, so I guess you would consider them brokered. But they're new issues and the price is $100 so I doesn't appear that TDA is taking any fee off the top.